Fashion Constructed Image RPHC4004

Summative Assessment Group 6

Molly Farmer Conor Galloway Chrissie Kirk Gemma Norton

Early Concept and Original Aims

ORIGINAL AIMS
Focus on an organic creative process and collaboration that will encourage a new perception of fashion. Conceptual experimentation with newforms of fashion representation with an aim to possiblyproduce a fashion film to accompany the stills. Emphasis on theatricality, abstraction and the avantgarde. The merge of art with fashion. The production of imagery that comments ona particular news or culture story currently relevant (e.g The Occupy Movement 99% vs. 1%). Use of socialmedia to enhance the potential of the project (Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook) and encourage demand. Creation of ambiguous, surreal and even-dream like imagery that immerses the viewer; they are forced to view the

ITIAL REFERENCES TO ACCOMPANY AIMS

Emphasis on abstraction and movement.

Nick Knight Dark Annie (A/W 20

teven Klein (Vogue March 2012) Steven Klein (Interview Summer 2011) Ann Mclaren Hodgson

Nick Knight Unbelievable Fashi (British Vogue Dec 2008)

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT: DYSTOPIAN VISIONS

Initial creation of an elaborate realistic storyline to achieve a unique and cohesive narrative with each image a different event together within the same universe linking to the previous image; decided upon focusing on the theme of a nuclear blast, from detonation to nuclear winter. Creation of a two-part shoot to achieve a successful narrative. First part a focus on the nuclear blast with emphasis on colour, abstraction and movement in which the model appears to take on the form of the bomb; second part more sombre and still to focus on the aftermath with emphasis on inky colours. Construction of a minimal small set consisting of a what appears to be the destroyed foundations of a building within a rubble filled wasteland; movement to take place within separate set consisting of lights and colourama.

ITIAL REFERENCES TO ACCOMPANY CONCEPT

Part One: Nuclear Blast (Day 1 01/05)

Part Two: Nuclear Winter (Day 2 02/05)

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Conor and Molly: (Conor)
Art Direction and Shoot Co-Ordination Visual Research Casting and Collaboration Styling and Dress Design Camera Master (Molly)

Chrissie and Gemma:

Health and Safety (Gemma) Prop Sourcing Lighting Lead Building Lead Budget Controller Post-Production Lead

(Chrissie) (Chrissie) Digital Tech (Gemma)

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY VISUAL RESEARCH (NUCLEAR BLAST) during the projects initial The team worked together development in the creation of moodboards detailing the chosen theme of dystopia and apocalypse. Conor and Molly then worked together on sourcing visual research from various multi-media resources to accompany the projects more focused development. When it had been decided to focus solely on nuclear war enough imagery of aftermath had already been collected for them to be able to concentrate on the first part of the shoot: the Nuclear Blast. They concentrated on sourcing historical war imagery, violent natural events, notable post-war artists, abstract art, theatrical and creative fashion shoots that focused on elaborate styling, movement, and unique post-processing.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY VISUAL RESEARCH (NUCLEAR AFTERMATH)

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY STYLING AND DRESS DESIGN COLLABORATION
Key to the success of the shoot was collaboration. To carry the shoot we needed a theatrical, powerful and iconic dress that would be flexible to look different across both parts of the shoot; this meant collaborating with a student second-year designer (Alice Partington) from UOB. We decided against using the MA garments as we felt that it wouldnt fit the outcome we wanted.

The group established what they thought would work best and Conor worked closely with the designer throughout to realise our vision. The initial brief was for a dress to represent a nuclear explosion as closely as possible in both colour and size.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY STYLING AND DRESS DESIGN COLLABORATION

Referencing the imagery sent, A.Ps designs represented a reversed nuclear explosion with a slim top and layered bottom half. This half featured heavy fabrics as a supportive base which were built upon with layers of chiffron that would be able to be lifted by wind machines to create A.Ps Initial Sketches on the chaos we wanted in our presentation of brief.

A.Ps Develop sketches and final design

The making of the garment

Shaping the dress was easy but colour was problematic. Too much colour and it would look out of place, not enough and the dress would blend into the set. A.P carefully dyed all the fabrics a matt smoky grey before carefully working into the layers with the more intense colours working their way from the bottom of the dress to the top to represent that reverse explosion.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY CASTING The dress was theatrical and we needed a tall, slim, strong, flexible, powerful and long-haired model to incorporate our vision of a nuclear blast; an individual that also did not look commercial. Finding all our collaborators was very difficult and took months of searching through Facebook and word of mouth. Models were particularly difficult to find. All members of the group took a proactive effort to search through Facebook whilst Conor and Molly worked together to contact modeling agencies and search through freelance model websites; unfortunately we received no reply. The need to shoot across two days to maximise the potential of our shoot made narrowed our choice of models to just Chloe; but slim, long haired and six foot tall fulfilled all our preferences We managed to find four potential models:

Georgia Ku

Beth Arscott

Freddy Fuller

Chloe Davis

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND MOLLY HAIR AND MAKEUP COLLABORATION

We also needed a competent hair stylist and make-up artist to achieve the look we desired: Part One Wild windswept hair and quite minimal make-up (bare face/nymph like with smooth and pale skin and strong cheekbones/jawlines) Part Two Wet sleek back hair and quite minimal make-up (bare face/nymph like with smooth and pale skin and strong cheekbones/jawlines). Victoria guided us into considering quite a minimalistic look in order to avoid a clash with the theatre of the dress and the set.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA SET DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA SET DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT The initial design for our set was to be based on a projected image that we would then build out from. The model would have a context and place of being, yet it would still obviously be fake and appear as a distant memory of the character. Although the idea was strong, we had issues with projection in terms of the lighting (see lighting slides). One of the main issues was that the model would have to stand to the side of the projection unless we wanted it to be placed upon her; she would also have to stand quite far away to get a sense of scale, in the images below she is standing a foot away. We then looked at using a printed fabric backdrop: with the pricing for a 3mx1.4m around 30max.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA SET DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT After eliminating the fabric print/projection idea, we looked at keeping a back image, but constructing the destroyed buildings in front of this image. We decided on painting a city skyline on canvas for this would add depth and a sense of place and time to the final images. Having two walls would allow us to have a larger shooting area, but for the back image to drop out and not be so prominent, there needed to be a great distance between the building and the back image: so the size of the space was an issue. We decided to use polyboards as walls as they were lightweight and easy to assemble into position.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA SET DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Mock set up of second build idea: two walls, placed at a 90degree angle. Height in the middle -

We measured this as 12x12:

arge set to alter sense of scale and for the model to appear small i e then found was the sets lack of depth so we tried moving the set vanishing point and also making the larger sections of the walls t le to backdrop to have more of a focal point.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA SET DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

We pushed the idea of further depth to the set after a meeting with the set build designer and decided upon adding more layers to the scene; building backwards into a vanishing point. This allowed separation of the polyboards and places for the model to interact with the scene. We also discussed the context of the set: the types of colours, brick styles and flooring we would use would create the sense of a place and time within the image, so this all had to be carefully selected.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA SET DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

We further developed the set on the day of the build by removing the obvious vanishing point and widening the canvas, creating more realistic walls in order to add depth to both the image and set. The size of the set did mean our shooting space was limited, but it allowed for us to create the style of set we wanted in terms of scale.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE AND GEMMA LIGHTING DEVELOPMENT Projection: We discussed the idea of using a projector so we could use a moving image and create a really abstract feel to the set. We were unsure on what to project as we all had slightly different visual ideas for the set. We wanted it to be abstract and maybe appear to be like a memory, so like the images would be a flash of the past and that would be how a narrative would appear. We played around with two different projectors to see what range we could get, also trying a a back projection to so that we wouldnt get a shadow of the model. The light, scale and shadows from the projector just meant it was not worth the hassle. And we thought up a different idea using a canvas backdrop. We also tried out using colour gels, this would give more of an atmosphere to the idea of a blast perhaps. But with trying that it was a clear that it wouldnt work for us, it didn't give the effect that was evident in the research. It was back to the drawing board with both of these as neither

These examples show the different problems we encountered when trying out the projection and colour gels. We wanted the scale and distance so that she looked small amongst her surroundings but without compromising light. Unfortunately this wasnt achievable with this set-up.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE MATERIAL SOURCING FOR SET Two of the most important features of the set design that had to be completed prior to construction were polyboard walls and sourcing rubble, both were long and tedious. Polyboards were sourced online at their best price whilst rubble was sourced from residential skips and breakers yard.To add variety to the rubble and depth to the set we sourced a wooden pallet the university skips. Smoke and machines were sourced through the university and an external company, but preoccupation with a perfect image meant that the smoke machine wasnt used as much as it could have been; this meant that the images captured were smoke look out of place as a series. Gravel was sourced to appear like ash without compromising H&S, but fell out of use like the smoke machines.

This would be cheapest option

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CHRISSIE BUDGET SPREADSHEET

The Budget. This was fairly simple to keep track of as we all knew who was buying what. The bottom grid is all about

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: CONOR AND CHRISSIE Our original storyboard consisted of seven shots. We wanted a STORYBOARD dramatic, cohesive and interesting editorial that incorporated both realism and abstraction. Because we were only using one garment we felt that burning the dress would represent the entirety of a nuclear explosion whilst appearing to become another garment. To represent a nuclear explosion and nuclear winter we really needed to shoot across two days instead of the standard one as the shots would take time to achieve.

SET PREPRATION AND BUILD

SET PREPERATION BEFORE BUILD WEEK We all contributed prep work and painting before building the set. It took several weeks to get all the poly boards completed in order for them to appear like brick walls; this was achieved through careful mapping, cutting and texturing to make them appear like brick work. The rubble was prepared at the same time as the walls but giving a realistic layer of paint was difficult due to its texture. A city skyline was easy to paint onto the canvas.

SHOOT WEEK: SET BUILD DEVELOPMENT

This was a very long week of setting up, playing around and making mistakes. There were a lot of

IMAGERY: CONTACT SHEET AND INITIAL CHOICES

IMAGERY: INITIAL CHOICES AS A CONTACT SHEET

In total we took 1500 images, but on both shoot days we encountered problems with lighting and face sharpness which meant only a selection of the images were actually useable. The images were split into sections of similarity and the final three chose based on a cohesive link between them in the editorial and a link back to our original storyboard vision.

IMAGERY: IMAGES CONSIDERED TO TAKE FORWARD THROUGH TO EDITORIAL

IMAGERY: EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL: INITIAL CONCEPT

EDITORIAL: DISCARDED CHOICES

Constructing an editorial was frustrating as the shoot days didnt go as we had hoped and the storyboard was no longer possible. We originally wanted to go for quite a fine art photographic magazine inspired presentation which would have allowed us to be more creative with our selection of imagery and fit our original aim to be abstract,

EDITORIAL: DISCARDED CHOICES

We needed a cohesive narrative of similar imagery and our choice of a sinister opener image and double spread overlay with the models face obscured meant that are original ideas of including fabric images and portraits of the model looking powerful could not be realised as they did not fit. We kept the models face hidden throughout and decided upon a sinister but simple and uncluttered spread with page breaks.

EDITORIAL: FINAL CHOICE

EVALUATION

EVALUATION:
We underestimated the difficulty of building the set and selective lighting which meant our ambitions for a two part editorial could not be realized. We werent able to utilise the entire possibilities of the set. Decision making was slightly poor during earlier stages of production and when editing; this is something to reflect and improve on. Because of time management difficulties and constraints our research as a group is not as strong as it could have been and a lot of our original aims were not achievable. However a better portfolio in no way would have improvised the resulting imagery. The group worked very well together: everyone played to their strengths and adopted equal supportive roles and everyone endorsed very strong work ethic. A two tier group system allowed efficiency and a partner to rely on The decision to commission a especially designed garment explored our concept further visually and set us apart from the rest of the year and tested our collaborative skills.